Published in The Scottish Banner, July 2022

More than 3,000 rock art sites, many of them bearing cup or cup-and-ring marks, are known in Scotland today. They were made between 4,000 – 2,500 BCE, and re-used in various ways well into the Bronze and Iron Ages. There are several especially dense clusters, including around Loch Tay, but no historic landscape quite brings them to life like Kilmartin Glen in Mid-Argyll…

Published in The National, 27 February 2022 (2-page spread)

From fiercely independent tribes beyond a wall to faces in the trees and marauding sea wolves, Game of Thrones draws from a deep well of Scottish inspiration. There are many historic locations you can visit to bring Game of Thrones to life in your own proverbial backyard. These are some of the best…

Published in Hidden Scotland Issue 4, Spring/Summer 2022

Stories and feelings. More than two centuries after Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley and countless artists took castles as their muses, these same forces seem to form the foundation of our fascination. They are reinforced by the books we had read to us as children and the films we watched in our formative years; from the desire to come into contact with dramas grander than ourselves; and, perhaps now more than ever, from the need to ‘get away from it all’…

Published in The Scots Magazine, December 2021

It began in a glass case, and ended in a cave. You never do know with these things. Earlier that afternoon, I strode through the gates of Rothesay Castle certain that doing so would form the singular memory of my time on Bute. Orthodoxy holds that a breach in the curtain wall was made by Viking axes during a siege eight hundred years ago, when the Clyde was a battleground between Norway and Scotland. A casual mention by the castle steward sent me to Bute Museum, just across the moat…

Published in Timeless Travels, Autumn 2017 (lead cover story)

For most of human history, seas, lakes and rivers were highways rather than barriers. When you understand that, everything you think you know about Scotland’s Western Isles changes. A region now famous precisely for its remoteness, not so long ago it was a bustling crossroads between the British Isles, Scandinavia, Northern Europe and far more distant shores. This is the realm of the sea kings, and the Castle Corridor stands guard…

Published in History Today, November 2016

Not a single aspect of medieval society escaped the shadows cast by Scotland’s castle walls and the schemes unfolding within them. Scotland is a land of castles, with more than 1,500 still standing. Ranging from mostly vanished mounds to fully restored keeps, a survey of these structures holds tremendous potential to reveal the formative forces behind Scottish, as well as British and European, history and politics.

Venue: Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
May 17th 2019

I was honoured to hold the launch event for my debut book, ‘The History Behind Game of Thrones: The North Remembers’ at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh.

Attended in-person by over 50 people, it comprised an hour-long talk on Scotland’s historical parallels with Game of Thrones, followed by a Q&A and book signing.

Venue: Dundonald Castle (online)
August 12th 2021

How did late medieval castle architecture respond to a shifting political landscape? Late medieval Scotland was a time when power was, broadly, centralising. Did this process have a tangible effect on castle design and function?

Ardrossan Castle, Ayrhshire, and Crookston Castle in south Glasgow were case studies for a talk blending politics, history, and architecture.

Venue: Lauriston Castle, Edinburgh
October 12th 2019

Castles are one of the most enduring and dramatic representations of power from the middle ages. How were castles first introduced to Scotland? What came before them? And what led to their ruin and disuse as socio-political institutions?

Part of Lauriston Castle’s lecture series, this talk summarised 2,000 years of the evolution of fortified sites in Scotland, from hillforts and brochs to castles and artillery forts.

Venue: Gladstone’s Land, Edinburgh
March 3rd 2022

The idea for my book began as a talk for Gladstone’s Land in 2016 while I worked there as a guide. This talk brought things full circle, with a discussion of the historical inspirations and parallels between Scottish history and Game of Thrones derived from my 2019 book.

An Edinburgh focus covered the Black Dinner at Edinburgh Castle in 1440, Craigmillar Castle as Scotland’s closest match for Winterfell, and the remains of the Antonine Wall and other Roman-era sites in the Lothians.

Venue: Online lecture for History Scotland
February 15th 2021

Scotland's medieval history has long been framed as a bloody balance of power between kings & nobles, with the latter winning the long game. But was it really so?

Drawn from by MRes in Historical Research dissertation for the University of Stirling, this talk challenged the conventional wisdom that power in medieval Scotland was a zero-sum game played between the institution of the crown and the nobility.

This lecture is no longer available online.

Venue: Previously…Scotland’s History Festival
November 19th 2017

Video games depict castles in all shapes and sizes, from Super Mario Bros.’ end-level castles to the crumbling fortresses of the Elder Scrolls series. But how would these pixellated castles hold up in a real-life medieval siege?

This talk for Previously…Scotland’s History Festival put them to the test, along with several film and television castles including Winterfell, Helm’s Deep, and Disney’s Cinderella Castle.

This talk was not recorded.